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Immigration debate gets heated on Senate floor

The Scrum: Border security key to immigration (PODCAST)

The New York Democrat began to lose hope. Rather than deliver immigration reform with the 70-plus-vote show of force that Schumer had hyped so often, Democrats and the Gang of Eight would have to scratch and scrape their way to a filibuster-proof majority.

And yet, less than 24 hours later, they had a deal.

The answer to their problem turned out to be simple: Throw money at it.

The Congressional Budget Office issued a cost analysis late Tuesday predicting that the reform bill would trim the deficit by almost $1 trillion over the next two decades. Schumer’s top immigration aide suggested senators could funnel some of those savings into border security.

And by Wednesday afternoon, Republican negotiators led by North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven and Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker had dropped their demand to make the path to citizenship for country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants contingent upon the government achieving a 90 percent apprehension rate along the border. In return, they secured a staggering $30 billion for what is now being called a “border surge.”

“Frankly they ended up having to give more,” said Hoeven, who had the contentious phone call with Schumer.

The Gang of Eight, the White House and Republican senators still need to resolve differences over restricting immigrant access to government benefits.

But the agreement on border security eases passage next week of the overall bill and renews hopes among the Gang of Eight that it is closing in on an improbable, overwhelmingly bipartisan victory that few would’ve predicted only six months ago.

“Today,” Schumer said from the Senate floor Thursday, “is a breakthrough day.”

Obama has had little role in the Senate debate thus far, intentionally. But at the height of the talks Tuesday, the president weighed in with Schumer from Air Force One while traveling through Europe.

Over a shaky line — they had to be reconnected twice — Obama told Schumer that the 90 percent trigger was unacceptable. Schumer said they were trying to find a different benchmark, and Obama told him to keep working toward an agreement.

The fact that the deal was reached in just hours after both sides were ready to break off talks underscored the political need for passing a bill in the Senate with a strong bipartisan majority. Democrats were eager to quell the growing perception that the bill was weak on the border, in the hopes of pushing the House into action. And Republicans, struggling to right their woes with Hispanic voters, were eager to find a bill that gave them sufficient political cover on the border — while appeasing their business allies hungry for an immigration law.

Money broke the impasse — more money than Democrats, Republicans and veterans of past immigration fights could have ever imagined. The original Gang of Eight bill included $6.5 billion for border security, and they thought that was an extraordinary, even unnecessary, investment after years of infrastructure and manpower buildup along the Southwest border.

Now, the government may spend $30 billion to double the number of border agents to 40,000, guarantee the completion of a 700-mile fence along the Southern border, and bulk up the country’s arsenal of drones, sensors and other technologies.

It would dump more money and resources on the border than Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) envisioned under his tough amendment that spurred the Gang of Eight into pursuing an alternative.

“We have practically militarized the border,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Gang of Eight, said proudly. “If this amendment holds together and it passes as currently constructed, border security will have been achieved at a level that nobody would have thought possible a month ago.”